Two early goals in 90 first-half seconds sealed the Dons' seventh home win of the season but both sets of players, officials and supporters almost certainly went home talking about one of the oddest refereeing performances they are ever likely to see.

This was, in truth, a fairly uneventful, anything but extraordinary game and anyone coming to the game that didn't know which of the sides was one place outside the play-offs and which was one place inside the relegation zone would have been left in little doubt inside the first 12 minutes.

First, Danny Kedwell's superb far-post cross found Nathan Elder's head but Rovers defender Oliver Thorne cleared it off the line. Despite fairly vociferous shouts for handball as Danny Blanchett tried to play Ricky Wellard in from the loose ball, the visitors snuffed out the Dons first chance of the afternoon with only five minutes gone.

Then, three minutes later, Sam Hatton's long ball down the Rovers right was latched onto by Will Hendry and his pinpoint chip was headed home at the far post by the diving Elder for his third goal in his first three Kingsmeadow appearances. Only 90 more seconds had elapsed when Hatton made his second telling contribution, this time seeing his block tackle on former million-pound striker Isaiah Rankin scoot handily into the path of Steven Gregory, whose cultured touch found Wellard just inside Rovers half. As the opposition backed off, Wellard strode purposefully forward and nudged an inch-perfect ball into the path of Hendry. He took one touch before calmly slotting past former Dons triallist David Wilkinson from the edge of the area for his first goal in AFC Wimbledon colours.

A rout looked on the cards when Lewis Taylor took Kedwell's neat through ball in his stride shortly afterwards, but his angled drive found only the outside of Wilkinson's near post. The Dons were in cruise control, Rovers were a shambles, to put it politely, and their manager Dave Hockaday was looking nothing less than shell-shocked. What were the odds on a repeat of the 4-0 half-time Boxing Day lead that Wimbledon accumulated against Hayes & Yeading? Well, thanks to a head injury to Brett Johnson and the first of a series of entirely baffling refereeing decisions, those odds will remain an unrequited mystery.

Referee Atkin's failure to deal with an incident that saw two balls on the pitch for slightly more than one second unfortunately set the tone for an afternoon of perplexing officiating. As Wilkinson connected with a goal kick, a stray ball was kicked back over the Kingston Road End and bounced into his penalty area. The laws of the game state that the original ball must be used where possible so the sensible option was, surely, to stop the game, kick the new ball out of touch and ask Wilkinson to retake the goal kick with the new ball. Atkin's insistence that the game be restarted with a drop ball that Will Hendry was asked to hit out for a goal kick had both Hockaday and Terry Brown shrugging their shoulders in disbelief, largely as it had taken the West Sussex-based referee almost two minutes to convey to the players what he wanted them to do with a series of extravagantly confusing hand gestures.

Sadly for the game, the official had taken centre stage and steadfastly refused to leave it, brandishing seven yellow cards, three of them seemingly unjust, but failing to penalise a whole host of other far more caution-worthy offences by both sides.

Johnson's head injury, caused by the flailing elbow of Reece Styche, saw the defender helped off the pitch and head down the tunnel for the wound to be stitched. When he re-emerged, head swathed in bandages, some 10 minutes later, the Dons were lucky not to be behind. Brown's decision to drop Gregory, and not the more defence-minded Hatton, into Johnson's central defensive position almost proved to be his team's undoing.

Styche and Tomi Ameobi were both unwitting benefactors of Gregory's dallying - hoofing the ball clear is just not the midfielder's style - but the Dons were fortunate that the visitors were wasteful in possession and just as profligate with a rapid-fire series of four free kicks around their penalty area, three of which seemed to be given against players that had been fouled.

James Pullen, making his first BSP start for nearly three months, then nearly handed Rovers a goal that they would barely have deserved. Conal Platt's cross seemed to be sailing straight into his hands but Pullen somehow found himself underneath it and it was all he could do to palm it onto Sam Hatton's head from where it sailed goalwards, both players being mightily relieved when the ball cannoned back off the bar. After an almighty goalmouth scramble Ameobi's tame show was pushed wide by Pullen to ensure Wimbledon clung on to their two goal cushion. It was no coincidence that the defensive pandemonium that ensued during Johnson's absence slowed to a sense of only mild panic when he returned.

While it's extremely unlikely that Terry Brown's half-time team talk included the phrase "Right lads, first 10 minutes, concede possession in dangerous areas, fail to clear crosses and give them a really soft goal", had it done so his Wimbledon team would at least have to be congratulated for carrying out his instructions almost to the letter.

From looking like a team who knew they were beaten with 80 minutes of the game left, Forest Green, admittedly with a fair amount of help from AFC Wimbledon, suddenly found themselves in the ascendancy.

Hockaday's what-have-we-got-to-lose double change at half time seemed to unsettle the Dons and it was mainly down to the visiting team's continuing inability to pick the right pass in the final third that the visitors failed to unduly trouble Pullen, although one hopeful ball over the top by Preece set Styche free and it was only an expertly timed intervention by the back to form Paul Lorraine that prevented Rovers from pulling a goal back. Had the Dons been so generous to a mid-table side it would have been highly doubtful that they'd have had a two goal lead in the first place, let alone been in a position to increase it.

The introduction of Jay Conroy, for the concussed Johnson, and Glenn Poole, for the rusty Gregory, had the twin effect of calming the Dons' nerves and nullifying Rovers' new-found threat. Conroy immediately threw himself into the battle and within five minutes of coming on had left Styche, Rankin and sub David Brown in no doubt that he meant business, winning several headers, making three rambunctious tackles and clearing dangerous balls into the box with no-nonsense interventions.

Poole on the other hand saw much less of the ball than the seemingly magnetic Conroy but what he did do he did brilliantly, nicking possession from unsuspecting midfielders, athletically cleaning up when twice Danny Blanchett got himself into a tangle and setting Kedwell and Elder free with beautifully weighted passes into space behind Thorne and Preece.

Poole's introduction at last gave the Dons fans something to cheer and it was no surprise that he was involved in all four of his side's best chances of the second half. Hendry, Hatton and Kedwell all shot wide and Wellard completely mistimed his jump as he shaped to head home a Taylor cross, but Wimbledon's two goal lead looked unassailable for the first time since Johnson's enforced absence midway through the first half.

Kedwell was the victim of one of the season's strangest bookings - he reacted angrily to Thorne's late challenge and as he confronted the former MK Dons trainee, Thorne pushed his forehead into Kedwell's face and seemed to lash out at the Wimbledon man. The referee called both players towards him after the ensuing melée had calmed down but incredibly exonerated the Rovers defender and booked Kedwell. His angry reaction may have started the incident but Thorne's headbutt was surely a more severe offence. Even the fourth official looked perplexed as the Dons bench vented their understandable fury.

Kedwell then shot wide again as the game petered out but, in truth, the Dons had the three points in the bag in the ninth minute. It was just that they had dropped the bag half way through the first half and had spent much of the second metaphorically on their hands and knees trying to find it.